After final salvos, Porco case left to jury

BRENDAN J. LYONS Senior writer

Published 1:00 am, Thursday, August 10, 2006

GOSHEN -- Christopher Porco sat stoically in a packed Orange County courtroom Wednesday as his attorney and a prosecutor cast divergent portraits of him for a jury that must decide whether he is a calculating killer or a victim of inexplicable circumstance.

His mother, Joan, bearing the terrible scars of the November 2004 ax attack that killed her husband, Peter, was flanked in court by a dozen supporters who, like her, contend police have charged the wrong person.

Across the aisle, Peter Porco's sister, Patty Szostak, and several of his former colleagues sat shoulder-to-shoulder behind the prosecutors whose evidence they have embraced as the truth.

The attorneys' summations were heartfelt, with each side recounting their strongest points from a case that will now be left to a jury of eight women and four men, none of whom knew anything about the grisly and unsettling murder when the trial began seven weeks ago.

"Chris' life will go from our hands to your hands now," said Laurie Shanks, Porco's co-counsel. "They didn't want to know the truth, ladies and gentlemen. ... They want you to spin everything in the light most damaging to Christopher."

In her two-hour summation, Shanks highlighted the fact that police built a largely circumstantial case against Porco, never able to find evidence that would have directly placed the ax in his hands on that crisp Sunday night 21 months ago.

Albany County Chief Assistant District Attorney Michael P. McDermott conceded that police almost immediately zeroed in on Porco, but he said they had good reason.

"The case started with a nod, and I told you it didn't end with a nod," he said to the jury.

As he spoke, a photo of Joan Porco's badly bludgeoned body was shown on a large projection screen across the courtroom. Her body lay sideways across her bed, still clad in her nightshirt and sleeping socks that had become drenched in her blood. It was there, McDermott said, where several police officers and paramedics say Joan Porco used hand gestures and nods to identify Christopher as the assailant.

"There was no mistaking her response," he said. All of them had perceived her answers "to identify that man right there," he added, hoisting his arm toward Christopher Porco, who was seated across the courtroom.

For the jury, the testimony about what unfolded in that bedroom will be a critical hurdle in their deliberations. The judge will instruct them this morning that if they believe the police account, they can consider it as direct proof that Joan Porco had identified her younger son as the killer.

If the jury casts it aside as unreliable, they will be left with a case built largely on circumstantial evidence that prosecutors believe still placed Christopher Porco at the scene of the murder that night. That evidence includes a neighbor who said he saw Porco's yellow Jeep tucked in his parents driveway at a time when authorities contend the murder was unfolding inside the residence.

Shanks assailed the prosecution's case, noting they were unable to find any blood in Porco's Jeep. She also questioned whether Joan Porco, whose head had been split open in the attack, understood what she was being asked that morning.

"Can we base an investigation ... on this and nothing else?" she said. "She had massive brain trauma."

At the time of the murder, Christopher Porco's life was inarguably tumultuous. He was failing his classes for at least the third time at college, was heavily in debt and had lied to his parents, telling them the University of Rochester was covering his tuition that fall because they had lost one of his exams the year before.

In reality, he had tried to secretly pay the $31,000 tuition by forging his father's financial information on a high-interest credit loan. He also did the same thing to purchase his new Jeep months earlier.

"His dad had every right to be angry," Shanks said. But she claims that Christopher and his parents had smoothed out their differences just prior to the murder, and that he stood to gain nothing from their deaths.

"It's just silly to think that Christopher Porco would want to kill or maim his parents for money," she said.

McDermott saw it differently. He urged the jurors to read dozens of e-mails in evidence in which Peter and Joan Porco had heated and confrontational exchanges with Christopher in the months leading up to the killing. He read excerpts from two of them, in which Joan Porco questioned her son's mental health and Peter Porco threatened to file a forgery complaint against him.

"There was significant tension in the family," McDermott said.

Prosecutors did not object at any point during the defense's summation, but Shanks and her co-counsel, Terence L. Kindlon, objected several times during McDermott's closing argument and called for a mistrial.

In one instance, McDermott was attacking the credibility of a defense witness, Dr. William M. Shields, who had challenged the findings of a DNA expert who testified there was a 99.61 percent chance that Christopher Porco's DNA was on a Thruway ticket turned in at an Albany tollbooth on the night of the murder.

"He's a lone wolf in the DNA community," McDermott said, adding that Shields also had testified against DNA experts in the California murder trials of O.J. Simpson and Scott Peterson.

"That's dirty pool!" Kindlon shouted, as he and Shanks shot to their feet and the judge quickly cleared the jury from the courtroom.

Judge Jeffrey G. Berry reserved decision on whether to declare a mistrial. He sharply admonished McDermott outside the presence of the jury and then instructed the jurors to disregard what he had said.

But when he resumed, McDermott went right back to the topic, urging the jury to rehear Shields' testimony regarding how he'd never agreed with the scientific and statistical findings of DNA experts at dozens of trials where he's testified.

The toll ticket is a crucial part of the prosecution's timeline. They contend Porco lied to his friends and family about being asleep the night of the murder in a dormitory lounge. He left campus and slipped onto the Thruway, McDermott said, racing home to murder his parents before returning to school the following morning.

The jury is scheduled to receive their deliberation instructions from the judge this morning. They will be allowed to deliberate until 6 or 7 p.m. each day if necessary. They will not be sequestered overnight or on weekends, the judge said.

Brendan J. Lyons can be reached at 454-5547 or by e-mail at blyons@timesunion.com.